Here’s CNBC’s Steve Liesman telling Rick Santelli, in no uncertain terms, that he is in an idiot:

Santelli, of course, was the flashpoint for the tea party formation, and he really does sound like a true teahadist. What the hell was he talking about academia and valets? What was that supposed to mean?

@Violet: And there is the core. My stock tips suck, don’t listen to me. Well you don’t have to ignore me cause I know my stock tips suck so I don’t make them. But I am stunned that some dude gets air time to yell and rant and he has no history of well being right.

It might be glorious, but how many of the rank-and-file (by which I mean only slightly very rich) money shovellers in Chicago or New York, or the people who watch CNBC because they think they’re too elevated for Faux News, are going to stop cheering pRick?

What the hell was he talking about academia and valets? What was that supposed to mean?

Obviously — the valet is an elitist form of entertainment, just as academia is hopelessly elitist. Together these forms of elitism have made the so-called educated classes in America a piranha to the Monday world. It’s enough to make you curl up in the feeble position.

God, I hate that vile prick Santelli. Animal control needs to lop off his noggin and test the tea-spoonful of brains within for rabies. I also wouldn’t mind seeing someone dump a vat of boiling oil on the blue-smocked losers cheering him on either.

I’ll never forget that bastard holding forth in the scary days when it looked like the US was facing an Iceland-scale financial meltdown — thanks to unbridled bankster greed! — and that sanctimonious fuckface was blaming it on people who were swindled via bad loans instead of the credit default-swapping cretins barking approval like trained seals behind him. What can I say…Santelli brings out my inner Villago delenda est.

But I am stunned that some dude gets air time to yell and rant and he has no history of well being right.

That’s because he’s actually serving as an entertainer rather than a serious stock analyst. Seriously, if you’re getting investment advice from talking heads on TV, you shouldn’t count on keeping your money for long. Even if he were capable of giving good advice, broadcasting it to all and sundry more or less guarantees it will lose its value, since people will act on it and move the market. If Rick Santelli- or anyone else, for that matter- knew enough about the market to make money consistently, they’d be running a hedge fund or working as a professional investment adviser.

@Betty Cracker: There’s a guy at my workplace– not a screamer, but just dead certain and dead wrong about everything. During the financial meltdown, he was going on and on and on with what would be charitably called ‘heterodox’ economic theories… I finally muttered to my supe that, in fact, no one knew what was going to happen. He’s quite the conservative himself, but he muttered back, “Obviously.” So, I think there’s sanity out there, but you don’t hear it over the noise.

He’s a performer, and he’s connecting with his audience by matching their emotional state. Viewers are doing exactly what nearly everyone does when they’re listening to people talk about subjects on which they’ve already made up their minds: They’re looking for clues as to who’s on their side and who is the enemy.

Santelli is communicating to teabaggers that he’s on their side and he gets their concerns, and he does this by showing that he’s as pissed-off as they are. A winger will watch that exchange and come away honestly believing that Santelli got the best of it.

@Roger Moore: Exactly. It’s like the companies that advertise gold because they know, they just KNOW that gold is going to go through the roof. Well, if I knew, just KNEW that gold was going to go through the roof, I’d invest in gold. If I didn’t know squat, I’d invest in ads to sell suckers gold at less than I could buy it for.

CNBC has the best stock quotes of any of the cable channels. But I can’t stand any of their people. They are all right-wing idiots. One of their worst is Maria Bartiromo. who once had the gall to tell their audience that “Americans would be offended if they had to start paying for other people’s healthcare as Obamacare calls for”.

I don’t ever recall her saying that people against the dumb Iraq war would be offended having to pay for it.

Needless to say, since then I always have the sound off when watching that channel.

@Violet: Mr. Santelli, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Providing information is a business. Businesses need profits. Shareholders expect returns. Creating a spectacle apparently is seen by some as a way to attract eye balls which sometimes is a way to attract profits. Santelli’s gig is to provide spectacle.

I know that the business of communicating news and other information has gone through a hell of a revolution recently. I wonder if we’ll ever get back to a stasis where quality is more important than spectacle.

@Hungry Joe:
I don’t know about that. If I know gold is going up but I don’t have much capital, I won’t be able to make much money by buying and holding while the market does its thing. If I work as a middle man, buying and selling gold and making a profit on each transaction, I may be able to make more than if I held a position for myself. Of course, I’ll wind up making money either way; that’s the real advantage of working as a broker.

This video is quite interesting — I just was making up a Krugman handout for my next physical therapy appointment to give the guy who was telling me that the government should run its budget the way his family does. I could tell him he was wrong but couldn’t remember why. (econ is not my strong suit)

He’s a performer, and he’s connecting with his audience by matching their emotional state.

This, but more fundamentally, he hangs on to his job by bringing in ad revenue. That’s all it is.

It’s the same with Limbaugh and O’Reilly and Beck. They are showmen, They make a living by making advertisers happy. They don’t believe half the shit they spew any more than a Ford salesman believes the cars he sells are better than those made by GM or Chrysler.

I suspect that they have a contempt for for their detractors simply because they are taken so seriously.

He’s a performer, and he’s connecting with his audience by matching their emotional state.

This, but more fundamentally, he hangs on to his job by bringing in ad revenue. That’s all it is.

It’s the same with Limbaugh and O’Reilly and Beck. They are showmen, They make a living by making advertisers happy. They don’t believe half the shit they spew any more than a Ford salesman believes the cars he sells are better than those made by GM or Chrysler.

I suspect that they have a contempt for for their detractors simply because they are taken so seriously.

Probably more or less the same assholes who were cheering him on when he gave his more famous rant. I never thought about it much, but I guess I’m not surprised to learn that, if you try, you can find some entitled pricks working the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

I absolutely detest CNBC, but Liesman is one of the better guys they have on – I never see him go off and say totally absurd shit like it’s matter of fact (like most of them do), or go nuts (like Jim Cramer or Santelli). I do think it’s telling that those clowns working the floor in Chicago prove they know jack shit about finance by cheering him on – great to know the financial system is in the hands of the ill-informed.

I wonder if Santelli and Liesman have ever met in person – they yell at each other all the time (well, Santelli does most of the yelling), and I have never seen an on-air conversation between them go well.

Back when I watched cnbc a lot, I pretty much ignored Santelli because he was just passing on what the commodity traders were telling him. I.e., he was just a shill for his sources. And commodities are just gambling anyway. He was better at it than a lot of the guys on the channel, it was obvious they were just passing along rumors. Still useful for making money if you recognize that the reasons you are getting that info may not be the reasons that are the most obvious.

And like Tom Friedman and his “Get Smart!” column, Santelli receives and cashes a paycheck. A farging big one. Oh yeah, The Moustache is at it again.

The creators of “Get Smart” were ahead of their time. Because it increasingly appears that the post-post-Cold War world is cleaving into the world of “order” and the world of “disorder” — or into the world of “Control” and the world of “Kaos.”

How so? First, we said goodbye to imperialism and colonialism and all their methods of controlling territory. Then we said goodbye to the Cold War alliance system, which propped up many weak and newly independent states with money to build infrastructure and to buy weapons to control their borders and people — because the stability of every square in the global chessboard mattered to Washington and Moscow.

OT-Somebody could tell the early 20-something working the elliptical machine in the row ahead of me that fairly thin pink shorts over a black thong accentuate and define her really, really perfect bubble buns, but that somebody won’t be me…

@KG: That video is hilarious, and the lyrics too…”wear my Ed Hardy shirt with orange flourescent pants, print my resume in Comic Sans, because I’m TACKY.” Jack Black twerking with a bedazzled fanny pack is a crack up. I needed a good laugh.

I listen to RWNJ radio whenever I am in the car, the gold and silver ads are priceless for their utter stupidity. Only last week there was an ad for silver that said that the supply was going to run out RIGHT NOW because of the demand for electronic products. This week there is an ad that said silver prices are so low that it is below mining costs, it is costing them more to get it out of the ground than it makes them to sell it. WHICH IS IT FUCKERS? I know the rubes that listen to RWNJ radio are not that smart but damn one would think that at some point they would realize they are being taken for marks.

@PsiFighter37: Yeah, this isn’t the first time that those two have tangled, nor the first time that Liesman has said that Santelli has been absolutely wrong about everything (and Santelli has been absolutely wrong about everything). Google video results for “Santelli + Liesman” has pages of results, all from different dates and shows. Here’s Santelli ranting about how great it would be if we got a US credit downgrade back in ’10 and Liesman saying “there’s a point in time when ignorance goes from being amusing to being dangerous and I think we crossed that point a long time ago.” Santelli is a clown and a dangerous one. Well, not like Pennywise or John Wayne Gacy, you’d have to be stupid enough to listen to him for him to actually be dangerous.

HA!! I go to the gym every morning with one of my best friends and she is now calling me Mrs. Robinson because of a particularly attractive young fella that has captured my eye (she caught me looking a few times) in his too tight t-shirts.

The problem with that is that their gambling causes prices for us rubes to go up on a regular basis, their gambling means we are paying more for gas, or bacon or whatever. Because of their gambling
my grocery bill goes up. Fuckers.

On another topic entirely, does anyone know what the deal was with the “Obama giving soldiers in Afghanistan pink slips” meme this weekend? My wife got an email from a relative out in Iowa about it, and I checked the Google, but all that came up were links to the New York Post, and about every other right wing site on the Net. But there was nothing on CNN, MSNBD, NYT, or any other place with a brain in their collective heads. The conflagration seems to have burned itself out.

I always like to send a “Reply All” back to the folks who send me these things, but nothing on Snopes, either. So anybody know what gives? Or gave?

@RAM: It’s called a “Reduction in force”, and it’s happening because of the sequestration. It’s neither anything new or surprising, given that we’re reducing the size of the military anyways, since we’re not staying in war mode. If they want to bitch at anyone, tell them the simple truth: Congress controls the purse strings, not the President. Boehner wanted smaller government, this is smaller government with no sacred cows. You get what you vote for.

I figured Krugman, who I think was Santelli’s “academic” target, would have something to say, and I think he is, unfortunately, right again

But here’s the thing: before Liesman started, Santelli yelled that he had been right all along — and some of the traders started applauding.
Think about that: Liesman is of course right about Santelli’s record, and as I’ve pointed out many times this goes for all the inflationistas. So any trader who believed him would have lost money hand over fist. So why the applause?
Basically, I think, it’s because Santelli is their kind of guy; he hates the poors, he hates people who want to help the poors, he was trashing Janet Yellen for suggesting that she actually cares about the plight of the unemployed. And the traders feel the same way. So they like Santelli even though he’s been wrong about everything.

@Keith G: well it’s a question of: are they communicating the information the audience wants to have, needs to have or should want to have? or are they communicating the information that the sponsors or owners want the audience to have.

@Mike J: that’s correct, these people are traders. At best, they know how to make money off of market swings. But generally the system is stacked in their favor, so they just sit there and collect their tax off of the trades of other people. They may not have money involved at all, I suspect they don’t

well it’s a question of: are they communicating the information the audience wants to have, needs to have or should want to have? or are they communicating the information that the sponsors or owners want the audience to have

This. Remember, you are only the customer if you’re the one paying the bills. If somebody else is paying the bills, you’re the product. If there are ads on your TV, you’re the product, and don’t count on that being limited to the stuff that’s formally labeled as advertizing.

On so many of these shows there are men just screaming and shouting at each other, constantly interrupting and generally loud and obnoxious. If women were to do this they’d be labelled emotional, hysterical and unstable. Why are men never called overwrought and hysterical?

@Eric U.: They may trade other people’s money, but the rules are strict about how, and if they quote a price and don’t trade it in the period it is that price, it comes out of their pocket. That and a host of other rules, I supported financial traders at both the CBOT and the MERC, and I had to be badged as a runner to access the floor.
A lot of the traders grew up as blue collar white flight suburbanites, and a great many have been laid off over the last few years. They’re often not as sophisticated about the economy as you would expect, given their jobs. They understand their little trading software and their narrow specialty, and that’s about it.

One of those moments where I wished I smoked so I could have a celebratory ciggie right now.

(Not that I ever understood the post-coital smoke, either. What’s wrong with snuggling and talking and getting into friendly arguments over obscure shit that have to be resolved by either grabbing the closest phone or starting a tickle fight?)

Santelli will probably move on to Fox when his contract is up and Rupert is willing to pay whatever it takes to get FBN with some sort of ratings. Maria Baritiromo used to come on Mornin’ Ho, looking hungover,like she had just rolled out of bed. She stopped coming on because I think they got too many complaints on the truly stupid comments she made.

CNBC has the best stock quotes of any of the cable channels. But I can’t stand any of their people. They are all right-wing idiots. One of their worst is Maria Bartiromo. who once had the gall to tell their audience that “Americans would be offended if they had to start paying for other people’s healthcare as Obamacare calls for”.